Archive for sales

I was honored to be asked to speak at The Sales Association Midwest 2013 conference in November. The event was focused on sales best practices, tools, and techniques for sales organizations and individuals. It was a great experience for me - especially since it was a brand new audience and community. Looking forward to giving this presentation more in 2014!

I am excited to announce that I am going to be a speaker at The Sales Association's Midwest Sales Conference on November 14th, 2013. I am presenting the following session: Social Selling in the Real World Thursday Nov 14 9:30–10:40am Room: MR1 Track: Real-Life Stories Social selling is the rage these days, but what does that really mean? This session is not about buzzwords or what’s new and cool, it’s about real-world practices of putting social selling to work. As a technology consultant who transitioned to sales 4 years ago, social selling tools and techniques made that change possible. Come see the ideas, techniques, and tools that helped John’s transition and enabled his success as a salesperson. You will walk away with a list of new tools to try in your own selling process. I am also participating in the following panel: Sales Executive Forum: Redefining Sales Performance in the Digital Era Thursday Nov 14 12:30–1:30pm Room: MR2 Track: Integrating to Succeed This engaging

I have heard something over the past couple of days that I thought I would put out for discussion. I am hearing about a huge gap between what vendors think is the current state with social business and cloud and what customers believe are important to them right now. On one side we have the vendors who are changing everything to fit into the social business and/or cloud business models. From branding and marketing to strategy to how they align themselves internally as an organization. I get why. These are the buzzwords getting traction in the tech media space. The analysts, the advertising, the marketers. Social media is hot, let's build on top of it as social business. I am not arguing that this is not a hot topic in the marketplace. Same with cloud. It's the buzzword of the time. From the Microsoft commercials to the Google and Salesforce.com sales pitches. I hear many of our larger customers talking about the cloud. On the other side of that coin are the companies that sell licens